Shot Yards Away From Police Station, a Teenager Collapses and Dies

Shirley Nelson, fourth from right, mourned her cousin LaQuan Nelson on Tuesday at a memorial at their home in Clinton Hill.

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

By JULIE TURKEWITZ

June 3, 2014

After he was shot Monday afternoon in Brooklyn, LaQuan Nelson, 16, staggered toward the 88th Precinct, collapsing on the sidewalk next to the redbrick police station house. But no one could save the teenager.

Gunfire had erupted shortly before 6 p.m. as LaQuan walked near his home on Classon Avenue in Clinton Hill, about 100 yards from the police station. Officers came to his aid and summoned an ambulance. But LaQuan was pronounced dead a short time later at Brooklyn Hospital.

He had been walking with a cousin, according to the police, when the pair encountered a group of young people. Words were exchanged, the police said, and one of the group opened fire.

At least five shots rang out, the police said, and at least one struck LaQuan in the lower torso.

No arrests had been made as of late Tuesday in connection with the shooting, the police said. LaQuan is listed in a law enforcement database of gang members, according to the police, but it was not known whether that affiliation was connected to the shooting.

The news of LaQuan’s death devastated Shirley Nelson, 64, a cousin who was raising LaQuan in Lafayette Gardens, a public housing complex. She had planned to take him to South Carolina on Tuesday night for her grandson’s graduation. LaQuan called her “Grandma.” She called him “Popcorn,” because of the tight curls that covered his head when he was a child.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this,” she said, standing in his bedroom, a tidy space with red curtains, a view of a tree-lined avenue, and four pairs of size 9.5 sneakers lined at the foot of the bed. “He didn’t deserve it. They took my baby from me.”

After the shooting, a teenage girl rushed to the elevator inside LaQuan’s apartment building, took a slow ride up to the 16th floor, and knocked on Ms. Nelson’s door.

“Ms. Shirley, Ms. Shirley, Popcorn’s been shot,” Ms. Nelson recalled the girl saying. “I said, ‘No he’s in his room.’ And I looked in the room, and he was gone.”

A 16-year-old, who said he was on Classon Avenue when the shooting occurred, said in an interview that although LaQuan was not a member of a gang or a crew, “he hangs out with the people that had something to do with it.” The 16-year-old would not give his name, saying he feared retaliation from neighbors.

Ms. Nelson, sitting at her kitchen table on Tuesday, described a basketball-obsessed boy, who attended William H. Maxwell Career and Technical Education High School in Brooklyn and dreamed of joining the N.B.A.

“He would say, ‘Grandma: I’m going to get you out of the projects,’ ” she said.

She showed off a science fair award and a sports award, and thumbed through stacks of baby pictures. Phone calls came in from teachers who knew him. Friends crowded into the kitchen.

His favorite basketball player? “Himself,” said Christine Davis, 45, who had known LaQuan since he was a toddler.

Downstairs, residents of the building stopped to scrawl notes of dedication on the lobby walls. “Love You Bro. RIP POP.”

“He wasn’t involved with anything,” said Leah Brown, 30, a friend of LaQuan’s.

“In these projects, it’s ‘I don’t like you cause you live in the front and I live in the back’ .”